


Piper

by JKoh



Category: Der Rattenfänger von Hameln | The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Fairy Tale), Original Work, Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Child Neglect, Gen, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:50:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1756721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JKoh/pseuds/JKoh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If this seems like a very brief chapter, it is.  I tend to subscribe to the idea that a chapter only has to be as long as it needs to get a scene, idea, etc., across.  But there will be more later in the day/week, so please don't feel cheated.</p>
        </blockquote>





	1. 1

Jeshuah was a weed growing through the sidewalk. It was a compliment to his tenacity, but it was also a problem; what no one liked to talk about in all these Tree Grows In Brooklyn metaphors was the way the roots cracked the sidewalks, strangled out other plants from below while the overhang starved them of sunlight.

 

Tenacity was easy to romanticize, but survival wasn't pretty.

 

Survival was sitting in the principal's office from noon until dismissal at least twice a week because no one could handle the eight-year-old boy throwing chairs or overturning tables because someone took his markers or bumped their knee against his sitting down at the carpet. Survival was the mother who named him after Jesus because the Polish church gave English classes. Survival was the little boy learning to speak violence because his father spoke derision and his mother, with both her languages, barely spoke at all.

 

No one was going to take advantage of Jeshuah. No one was going to attack or harangue him. Jeshuah was not the martyr his name suggested. Jeshuah was the weed.

 

And one day, Jeshuah was gone. His mother was working, then picking up three other children -- two growing into weeds themselves, restless where they'd been planted, the other still in diapers and all loud as hell -- then a crate at the food pantry, and then her English class. The church had daycare, and Jeshuah had a bike and a father at home. His father swore that the boy would be back. That he'd come in with some kid off the street and asked if they could go ride if he wasn't sure when they'd be home. That boys did this sometimes.

 

His mother doubted. But secretly, she was relieved for the briefest reprieve. So she didn't speak up.

 

Because Jeshuah was challenging. Jeshuah was violent. Jeshuah was unpredictable. Jeshuah was almost sent to a hospital twice, brought the police to his house after trying to hit his sister with a wiffle bat, and almost ended up in the system when someone turned the wiffle bat back on him.

 

Jeshuah was the weed, sucking up everything around him. The silence of his absence should have been measurable on a seismic scale. Instead, no one even told his therapist.

 

 

“They no-showed on me twice.”  Beatrice shouts into cellphone, leaning against her bike on the side of the road and watching the cars fly past the rocky nook.  It was too narrow an inlet, too tight to the curve of the country route, for cars to pull over, so it was hers, and her treads left a better signature along the bend than she could have with a knife or a sharpie. 

 

But that didn’t mean she didn’t write there.

 

There were still pencil notes in a dozen different places on the mountain face from taking calls, names in codes numerical and initialed, an illegible shorthand.  She folded her arms while she spoke, glaring in frustration at a leftover about the client in question.  “No I haven’t called DCF.  School says if he’s not back by the end of the week they’re doing it.  This is why I don’t go on vacation, alright?  You see what happens!”

 

A semi leans on the horn as it whips around, reckless, expecting more space.  She holds up a middle finger while she struggles to hear the woman on the other end.  “You have to keep on these ones!  You know, I know – Lauren’s at full caseload, she’s not going to force an appointment if they cancel, she has three kids, she’s going to call it an early night.”

 

“What?  No I didn’t call the church, why would –“

 

“A history?!  He has a history of running away and you didn’t think that was important to TELL anybody?”

 

“…no.  No I don’t think you’re psychic.  No – look, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you didn’t know.  Mailor told you?  Yeah well I’m going to talk to him tomorrow, I don’t care if it was proven or not, that’s a thing you don’t tell somebody working with a –“  She heaves a sigh.  “The church?  Okay.  How the hell does he know where to check if he doesn’t know for sure if the kid ran away?”

 

“Oh.  Great.  These small towns, I swear to…fine.”

 

“Can you –“  She shouts again over a passing grocery truck.  “CAN YOU CHECK AROUND THE DCF POOL?  WHAT?  Wh—yes!  Off the record!  Just…see if they’re in the system!  Thank you!”

 

“Seven?  No, I can’t make it till eight.”

 

“That’s fine!  Alcohol?  Okay.  Tell him to get us some of those peppers!  Yes!  No, don’t tell him I couldn’t remember the name!  Because she’ll give me shit, that’s why!”

 

“Come on! Come on, I’m a little stressed out right now, can you please – yes, thank you!  And call the –“  She plugs a finger into her ear, shouts. “Call the work phone!  Yes!  Call the work phone!  With the DCF thing!  I want to be able to answer!  Yeah, right away!  Yeah, that’s fine but if you can get it sooner –“

 

She checks her watch, drops her arm to swing a leg over the bike without losing balance, keeps shouting.  “I got to go.  I got to go, I’ve got Maria in twenty minutes and – yeah!  Eight, peppers – Ciesla.  See eye ee es, la.  Right.”  Beatrice lets her read it back. “Great.  See you.”

 

The phone gets zipped into an interior pocket on her coat, and she’s more or less deaf to the sound of her own engine as she pulls on her helmet.  The manner in which she rides to get to her next kid on time is probably six kinds of illegal.

 

Focusing has never been a problem.  When she’s stressed, she’s hyper-focused, and in the five hour gap she jumps rope, draws pictures, and manages to keep her voice perfectly level through a family meeting that nearly comes to blows.  She’s feeling like Buddha by the time she gets back on the bike, transcended above any feelings of exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, stress.  She considers meditation on the ride to Joe and Bri’s and remembers once most of the trip is a blur and she’s at their curb that that’s what she has the motorcycle for.

 

She inches the bike up the driveway and back toward the detached garage, helmet tucked under one arm.  Joe is up there with an easel, waving without looking up from her intense canvas-scowling, taking a swig from a clear bottle of clear liquid with the same hand as her longhandled paintbrush.

 

“…that’s the drinking one right?”

“Like I could fucking tell.  You going in or what, she’s waiting for you.”

“Are YOU going in?”

“What’m I your fucking mother?  Just get in the house.”

 

“HEY.”  The host leans out the kitchen window, trying to keep a nest of a braid from catching on the screen.  “STOP SWEARING ON THE LAWN.”

 

They stand, stare, first at where her head disappears back inside and then at each other.  Joe rolls her eyes, stands and sets the paints aside, picks out the right bottle after some consideration and carries it with him with a fist around its neck.

 

“When’re you visiting your mom again?” Beatrice makes directed small talk.  The house smells like food.  She’s still tense through the shoulders and down the back.  Trying to lean backward instead of letting her spine snap itself slouched or straight with nerves doesn’t make her look any more relaxed.

 

“Like a month.”  Joe taps out a cigarette.  “Look,” she orders, affection couched in attitude straight out of filthy subways and forty-story buildings, “either you gotta learn to make your own shit or pay me to move her out here.”

 

“Pretty sure if you told her I wanted her to move out here and cook she’d beat me to a pulp and leave me in the middle of the street.”

 

“If she hasn’t left this one in the middle of the street,” she murmurs around the cigarette, holding it in her mouth until she can fumble the lighter out of her pocket.  It dangles like a gesture to the woman setting the table with paper plates.

 

“Did you get my voicemail?”  Brianna ignores her with good humor, or lack of humor, isolating Beatrice and work from the ease of home, eyes boring into her patiently.

 

“…no.”  Bea’s brows meet in the center of her forehead. 

 

“They did have a problem a year ago with the running away,” she sighs, dropping a handful of mixed plastic silverware in the middle of the table.  “Nothing substantiated about the church thing, teacher did do a followup when it happened, they’re going to have me go in tomorrow.”  Meets her eyes again, gaze sharp in lieu of a lecture as she repeats her own house rule, Bea addressing it in kind with rolling eyes.

 

“But we’re not talking about it anymore because that’s work and this is not.”

 

“Damn straight.”  Joe is on her way into the kitchen to full cups with something that isn’t vodka.  Shamelessly swats at her wife’s pants en route.  
  
“Going to cut your hands off, darling.”  
  
Joe just laughs, the guttural sound filtered through the echo of a running faucet.

 

Beatrice lowers herself into a seat and stares at nothing, forehead starting to sag against her eyes under the weight of frustrations they aren’t allowed to discuss at the table. 

 

Technically, they’re not supposed to talk about it at all, at least not with Joan within hearing range; but Bea codes her clients and doesn’t even need to use it; more often than not, she and Brianna know exactly who they’re talking about through vague descriptors, or tones, or timing.  _The one with the dog_ , or _THAT parent you know who I’m talking about_ or _remember yesterday_?  This makeshift family is always skirting around details, always a word or two away from a HIPAA violation.  But they manage.  If they managed when Bea was half of Brianna’s team, they can manage when they’re an agency apart.

 

Except that now, Bea is supposed to be in control of a situation, and she’s not.  Brianna’s the closest they can come to doing anything about it, and she’s doing it – in seventeen hours. 

 

“Hey.”

 

Beatrice blinks.  Brianna is snapping her fingers in front of Bea’s face, and Bea tries to look like pushing them away is a playful, conscious gesture, not a protection of personal space.  “Sorry.”

 

“We’re going to figure it out.”  She sets a piled plate of steamed vegetables between them.  “Now let it go or I’m going to make you meditate in the yard.”

 

“You mean sleep.”  Joe sits himself at her side of the rickety square table, reaches across Bea’s face to reach a bowl of buns that Bea hadn’t even noticed.  “Get bit to shit by bugs and sleep.”

 

Brianna voices her opinion of Joan’s by moving her target an inch out of reach and propping a bun in her own mouth.  In another hour, the two of them will be laying on their backs on the lawn out back, staring at stars, Joan a human chimney.  Bea can’t picture herself there.

 

Bea can’t see the food being heaped unceremoniously on her plate, or the pair that she’s eating with. She can’t see them staring, just for a moment, monitoring, or hear them sighing before talking about the shed Joe doesn’t want to install to work in a better environment or the perpetually nonexistent shopping list or the news they’ll agree they shouldn’t even pay attention to before recapping all of it. She knows it’s happening around her because that’s just how it happens, her hosts a dependable routine.

 

She should have had a five o’clock with Jeshuah today, and a three-thirty at school on Monday.  Usually she’s used to shifting appointments.  But today she feels upended, and she can’t imagine the rest of her rituals feeling right.


	2. 2

The bike goes into Joan and Bria’s shed when the frost date hits, but she hadn’t been doing much riding before then either. It was a wet Autumn. Leaves piled and slicked roads, and Bea had a hard enough time finding her focus without her life depending on it. 

Most of the season before it is missing, August fading into September in a haze of overcommunication. Interviews, follow-up calls, calls to chase down information that didn’t exist. Transferred cases, absent appointments, cautious talks from supervisors and friends. A carousel of counselors of which she didn’t immediately appreciate being the recipient. She tells the same feelings to so many people so many times that after awhile she doesn’t think she feels anything.

As a professional she knows this isn’t healing. As a person the numbness is better than the alternative.  
She takes leave. She learns from a very different perspective what her families must have felt by the time they reached her – tired, hopeless, relaying the pieces that led them there like a recording.

When she puts away the bike, she readies the car to get her back to clients. Checks all the mechanicals. Stocks board games, markers, construction paper in the trunk. Half her caseload is constant; half she rebuilds from scratch.

Every once in awhile she takes the long way through the neighborhood. Drives by his street. In January the family moves, and in its place is another one, well-adjusted, with an excitable clumsy retriever and a teenager that likes to read in an igloo on the lawn.

Beatrice can’t tell if the substitution is a warming distraction or a taunting reminder of what was missing, of what they couldn’t help them rebuild.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this seems like a very brief chapter, it is. I tend to subscribe to the idea that a chapter only has to be as long as it needs to get a scene, idea, etc., across. But there will be more later in the day/week, so please don't feel cheated.


	3. 3

It's starting to warm up just enough that there isn't any snow to stomp off onto the doormat on her way out. But it isn't nearly far enough into the season for the day to be longer, and she lets her eyes adjust to the street lights and the black night. The gas station down the street is probably closed by now, and she takes vague stock of her surroundings as she tries to plan the ride home. 

The church at the end of the road is closed for the night. A neighbor is just getting out of an SUV to head inside. A woman is paused in the street.

She's absolutely forgettable – youngish, could have been the mother of a preschooler through first grader, this was how Bea measured adults now. Blonde, bland in the way certain kinds of pretty enough could make a person more or less invisible, white like most youngish blonde pretty-enough women around here generally were. Absolutely forgettable, another woman taking a walk, except for the fact that she isn’t walking -- just standing at the curb like she's waiting for something.

In front of a client's house. In the middle of the night.

Bea doesn't realize that if anyone else looked at the woman they would have seen something different. The man inside, glancing out the window as a matter of habit whenever the therapist was leaving (as if he had to make sure she was really gone and not waiting for him to fuck up somehow), he sees a teenage boy kicking around the curb. There isn't anything to do past five, where else was a kid going to go? Let him bug the woman who probably knew where to send him anyway.

The woman-but-not makes eye contact with her -- Bea walking slowly past her, locking gazes because it's safer to see her if something happened as opposed to ignoring her and pretending this wasn't weird. She gets to her car. The keys are in her pocket.

The keys are not in her pocket. Where are her keys. Why is she freaking out about some harmless-looking stranger who was probably wondering who Bea was, invading their street, standing at an unfamiliar car in the dark? Maybe she's a neighbor. Maybe she's looking out for the family's safety. Maybe she's freaking out herself. 

She feels for her keys in her jacket, under her coat, in her slacks. She focuses with frustration on the pattern of the beating of her heart, tries to change the pace while fingertips grope blindly for anything cool and jagged.

"Are you Beatrice?"

"...sorry, do I know you?"

"No, but you know a friend."

"I’m sorry, I can’t talk about most of the people I spend time with."

"They're thirteen. They're very troubled."

"Ma’am, I’m sorry, I can give you my card and you can make a referral -"

"It isn't their fault that they're troubled. Their trouble isn't themselves."

"I'm sorry, I can't talk about my clients." Her bag. She bets they're in her bag. She feels her bag in what she swore was not a panic.

"Their name is Henry."

"Look - ma'am - I'm not talking about one of my kids. If you have a release, you can fax it --"

"You do know them." It’s only when the woman starts stepping forward that Bea realizes they haven’t moved up until now. She isn’t sure which of these things is more unsettling.

"I -" Her fingers hit metal in a side pouch. "- am opening my door, and getting in my car.” The woman pauses but, as Bea opens the door, rests a hand on the top as if to hold it for her, almost politely. Bea tries to use her crisis voice, her intervention voice, tries to keep her tone even and calm. She doesn’t get in. If she sits down she gives the stranger height and backs herself into a corner. Instead she stands, just out of reach of the door if the woman tries to slam it, key weaponized between her fingers down at her waist. “ I have a phone and a gun,” slow, “I have a permit to use it,” even, “I will call the police with my dying breath, and there are several people who know where I'm supposed to be,” calm, but also a lie, on both accounts, “and someone's watching from the house --"

"I'm not here to hurt anyone. And he doesn't see what you see, but that isn't important. I just wanted to ask --"

The woman lifts her hand from the door, maybe in the start of a questioning gesture. Bea leans down and pulls it shut quicker than she wants to admit. She calls through the closed window as she starts the car. "Call my supervisor!"

But the woman doesn’t move, and Bea can’t pull away when she’s standing there sandwiching her between them and the curb. The stranger doesn’t aggress, doesn’t lean in, doesn’t move. She just watches. Bea starts to feel around the buttons on her phone until she glances up again.

Something about the woman’s stare sticks here there. 

It’s a staring contest. Bea cracks her window lower by an inch. Waits. There's a barrier, a means of contacting authorities, and a hanging statement of intent to defend herself, all enough grounds for allowing a last attempt at communication. So she knows what to put in a statement.

"I'm here to ask you about Henry."

“What. What about Henry.”

"I've come to ask if I can take him."

"…first," she starts scrolling through the contacts in her phone with minute twitches of her fingers, hiding it in her pocket, counting silently in her head to find the entry for the local police. How long would it take to file a report and have it taken seriously enough to get a car out here? 

"You need to step WAY back."

"I just need your permission." She does step back, toward the middle of the street. Bea is too afraid to leave now, because of Henry, making calculations in her head, but the woman stepped back and that's a start. "So we can take him."

She has to keep her here, Bea figures. She has to keep this woman here and talking. The side-button on the phone is programmed for recording, and she brushes it with her thumb. Experience has taught her to cover her bases. It's a survival tactic. "You’re saying you want to take him. First it was you, now it's a lot of you. Which is it."

"Both and nothing."

"That's not an answer, that's a religious philosophy." Crisis voice. No reaction. No tension. She's trying. "Who are you."

"Would you trust me if I told you?"

A stranger on someone's doorstep asking her about abducting someone else's kid entirely? Of course. The name was what was missing for the trust thing. "It would be a start. If you're from an agency --" There was no way this woman is from an agency. "Credentials would help."

The woman steps closer to the car again. Before Bea realizes what's happening, they're opening the door, and Bea is too quick to move – her hand whipping out of her pocket and accidentally flinging the phone under the seat when it fumbles from her fingers – to keep the woman from laying a hand on her arm. Beatrice had already thrown herself across to the passenger’s side after the phone (and maybe, though she didn’t want to admit that either, the gun in the glovebox), and the motion sends her twisting off-balance. 

The duration of contact seems indefinite. The skin on skin gives less a static shock and more a crackle straight from an outlet. It’s sudden, or feels like it should have been sudden, but at the same time seems long enough for Bea to realize something is even more wrong than it already was to begin with, in a way she can’t describe. Before she can react there's a moment, just a moment, where nothing existed and everything was light and as ridiculous as it was, she suddenly feels as though she knew something unknowable of the universe. She wonders if this is a drug, if she’s dying, if the woman assaulted her and Beatrice just hasn’t figured that out yet.

And then the woman lets go. She takes a step back. Beatrice feels, still, like maybe she isn't part of the same planet anymore, though everything around her looks the same – including her own body, which she grabs at with one hand in defense, but of what she doesn't know. No blood, no pain, no holes where holes shouldn’t be.

Nothing physically feels different. She just feels aware of a different kind of space. Maybe a higher power. Feels an underlying drone to the universe. Maybe she's having a panic attack.

She still isn’t ruling out drugs.

The woman still stands there, back in the middle of the road. If it wasn’t for the phone being absent from her pocket, the open door, the change in her body’s elevation, she would assume this was adrenaline. That the last thirty seconds, a minute, hour? Hadn’t happened.

But it has. And she feels compelled to ask, to stall while she searches for the phone, she imagines, except that she isn’t even reaching. Something is different. This person is not the same, and neither is she, and maybe this is what people refer to as a religious experience. Maybe this woman is God, or something like it.

"...where do you want to take him."

"To a fresh start. To somewhere better for him. With kinder people."

"...a better place. Heaven, that sounds like you're talking about Heaven."

"Maybe. Something like that, to you, if that's how you see it."

"No that's not how I -- so you want to take him away from life. You want to kill him."

"We want to take him to a NEW life." The woman is incredibly calm and patient for the proposal she's making. "We just need the permission of the guardian to take him. And to his mind, that's you."

It's like the stranger is explaining death to a toddler, and Bea can't help but feel as lost as a toddler would be apt to. Feels the need to ask follow-up but can only think of stupid analogies. "Permission. Like a field trip. To reincarnation."

"If it helps to make it simpler, yes."

"No."

"...Beatrice, Henry is a boy in a life that is never going to get better. You know that he deserves another life, you're trying to help him find a way out. And we can give him --"

"No. I am not giving you permission to take my kid. And let me explain something to wherever you come from -"

"Beatrice."

"I am talking.” Well, if this was God and they hadn’t struck her down yet – after a pause as if to be certain she’d have the chance, she did in fact talk. “You don't tell me a kid's life isn't going to get better. You don't know that. People change. I'm here to make sure that happens. And you know what? Even if it doesn't? That kid is going to survive, and he'll HAVE another life. He gets to grow up and make that life. He gets the choice to decide how to build a life that's better, not God, not some magical fairy queen, not whatever you are, him. And you do NOT get to take that away from him, and you are not taking him."

By now the patriarch inside had gone back to the tv, presumably to the same place he’d paused before she’d showed almost three hours ago. All the other lights are out. The car door is open. It occurrs to Beatrice that even if she shoots this woman - if it came to that, if she had to - she doesn't even know if it would do anything. And all the woman in question is doing is staring in silence.

"...alright."

"...alright?"

"Alright," the woman tells her. "But this means the life he has from this point is your responsibility."

"Fine."

"Fine?"

No. Not fine. She’s probably only going to be working with his family for another six months. She’s not going to be there to help him with the life he has from this point. It’s decidedly not her responsibility.

But she has to say something. Has to show that someone will be stubborn for him. And if taking what she knows is a temporary claim to responsibility over a child that apparently might otherwise cease to exist if she didn’t – well, it’ll be an interesting story for her therapist. "Fine! What do you want – did you think I’d say no? Do you think I just go over there to hang out? I’m there to work, we work on giving him the stuff he needs to make life manageable, my job is to take responsibility for a limited period of time –“

“A limited period.”

“Well as long as that is you can’t take him.”

“His opportunity will only come this once. If you turn it down now --”

“I’m not making long-term decisions for a child that's not mine! Talk to his parents!”

“I’ve taken him once to talk. If they didn’t stop me, it’s an implicit acceptance –“

“Well I’m telling you no!”

Beatrice slams the door. She doesn’t bother checking the gas gauge as she pulls out, going too fast and trying hard not to look back. Twenty minutes later she’s stalking down route 73 with a gas can, pretending she isn't shaking. 

She doesn’t call the police. She isn’t sure what she’d say about the incident. She isn’t sure if any of it was real or, if it wasn’t, what the cause would be – there are clients on her caseload she could easily believe might give her a contact high, but this is not one of them. 

And if it did all happen – if it wasn't some lapse in reality, if she didn't fall asleep in the car for a minute and suffer a sideways expression of fear and misgivings about keeping her caseload safe - who would believe her?


	4. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hunter is nonbinary; they don't mind whatever pronouns, but neutral is best. When you see singular they, you're not seeing things, and I hope it reads without being confusing.

Heat rises. The first floor family includes a new baby and a great grandparent, and on the second floor is a couple from Texas. Which means that in the middle of a cold spell, the third-floor apartment is somewhere near 80 degrees. Even with the thermostat at 55. Even at four in the morning.

Hunter is in the middle of being harmlessly smothered by a nest of their own tangerine hair, remote in hand, arm slung haphazardly over their chest to keep from dragging on the floor. They don't own a cat per se, but somehow one keeps getting in and taking to dangling limbs like its property. Granted Hunter looks as if they may be made of sisal rope. So it may not entirely be the mystery cat's fault.

Moreso than concerns about being shredded in their sleep, Hunter wants to avoid the unfortunate side effects of certain talents such that groggily scratching beneath the cat's collar shows them more than they ever wanted to know about the people who put it there. It isn't as if second hand memories are automatically unpleasant, but Hunter just wants sleep, which is tricky when their REM-brain starts playing home movies that belong to someone they barely know. Particularly when things like family initiation gifts like cat collars with shared last names on the tags go from sentimental nostalgia to recollections of the voyeuristic and inappropriate. It's an odd way to wake up. It's an odder way to bump into the downstairs neighbors, who they've now seen way too much of.

They’re just about dozing when their cellphone – personal, not duty – starts vibrating. They squint, blink blearily, watch it dance its way across the overturned box of a table, then onto the floor. It isn’t until it blares its wake-up call from the carpet that they finally reach across and turn it over. 

It’s hard to decide most days whether the number that shows is on the ‘hesitate’ list or ‘answer immediately’ – but not at four in the morning. Even though they should probably try to get back to sleep, they hit green. “Hello?”

“…hey.”

The pause makes them drag themselves to sit, unsure whether to let their heart pound or calm it down. A pause could mean a lot of things. They run their hand up over their face, smoothing back their hair and trying to pull their eyes open from their hairline. “Are you alright?”

“…did you get any more information about our missing kid?”

“…Bee,” they lean their head against the back of the couch, collapsing like a string doll without the tension. “Beatrice, it’s...probably almost five,” they tell her, hand up against their hair again. The alarm clock on the floor across the room clearly reads 4:37, which had read 4:19 when they’d finally started to slip, but there’s only a handful of people who need to know they were actually awake.

“So that’s…that’s a no.”

“…why are you asking right now? Did something come up?”

The silence says maybe until another shift in numbers on the clock, and then it screams yes. It laces the distance between them, already a patchwork of cars and homes and farms and forest, with supposition. It puts the tension back into Hunter’s strings, pulls them upright. Makes them consider putting some real clothes on and heading out there, whether she wants them there on any other occasion or not. 

“Are you at Bree and Joe’s? Are you home? Are you alone?”

“This was stupid…”

“No, no, don’t hang up, it’s not stupid. Do you want to get a coffee?”

“I don’t need any more stimulants, I just…”

“The diner down in Wexley has coke floats.”

Another pause. A consideration. “I was drinking.”

“I can pick you up.”

“I’m not changing.”

“Do you have pants on?”

“Pajama bottoms.”

“I can work with that.”

It’s like a hostage negotiation. Bea chooses sanity over pride, swallows the latter along with any other conditions.

Hunter can’t say they aren’t relieved by the momentary silence. “…thirty minutes?” 

“I’ll meet you out front.”

 

Neither of them say a word, at least not immediately, about the lace on the glorified wifebeater or the pink-and-white-striped satin shorts. Hunter accidentally looks it all over a little too long to make sense of it, all of it such a departure from the usual dark straight lines of Bea’s usual attire, but they don’t say anything. They offer a consciously blank sort of glance from the driver’s seat, reaching for the door handle to get out and meet her, but settle for reaching over and pushing open the passenger’s side door when it’s clear she isn’t about to wait for the escort, or accept it.

The two of them soak in the quiet of the radio, Hunter in a companionable hush and Bea in self-conscious frustration. At the last light before the on-ramp, she shifts to shove her hands in her pajama bottom pockets. 

Hunter doesn’t say anything. They shift and try not to glance again while they wait for the light.

“…shut up.”

 

Bea doesn’t recognize the staff anymore. Hunter seems to know everyone, enough that no one questions them leaving their gloves on, and she watches their hands blearily and imagines they sleep in half their uniform. Waitresses smile, bob in and out of view, but no one hovers or starts up conversation. 

They order milkshakes. The two of them eavesdrop on conversations across the counter, truckers hauling potatoes and comparing state trooper horror stories and unfortunate opinions on race. Bea examines every face, as if some devil or deity may be waiting here at the diner at six a.m.

Hunter examines her with the same subtle caution. “…hey.”

“Huh? Hi.” She runs a hand down her face to wipe away sleep and paranoia.

“…are you okay?”

“No – yes. I don’t know.” Again, the hands, first one and then both at once. She speaks through her fingers. “How’s your fiancé or girlfriend or whichever she is this month.”

“…she’s, uh…” Hunter prods at their milkshake. “She’s gone, actually.”

A pause, and Bea lifts her head just enough to peer from her fingers.

“Boston. She’s really driven. That’s what I liked about her.”

The two peer at each other, Bea with some buyer’s remorse about what she’s started but without the conviction to stop it, Hunter in patient waiting.

When she doesn’t say anything, Hunter takes a sip from the milkshake, continues to try to stir the ice cream lumps into the slushy milk. “The plumbing issue didn’t help, I think, but I’m not about to change that. Yet. I think.” Another long pause. “What’s going on with…”

“No. We’re not trading trauma.” She makes herself sip at the shake. A person has never looked so irate while drinking ice cream.

“…just worried. You’re really stuck on this –“

“It’s not a case. It’s a person. It’s a kid.” She chews the words out around the straw. “What about Greg down at Action, he still asks about you.”

“I think I’m waiting it out, but…I’ll call him if you tell me what’s going on with you.”

She hails a waitress to put the milkshake in something portable. Shrugs on her jacket. This was a mistake – and she doesn’t care that much about Greg.

Hunter all but chases after her out to the car. “Are you sure you don’t want to just – talk about --”

“I don’t need anyone thinking that I lack the capacity to…” She tries the handle. Tries it again. Tugs harder until she realizes, no matter how cornered she may be, that the door won’t open until Hunter unlocks it. To their credit, Hunter is trying to fish the keys out of their pocket. The sun is coming up. Bea squints in its general direction. “I’m fine.”

They get to the highway before she speaks again.

“Just…keep an eye out for any weirdos.”

“Weirdos?”

“Like…soccermoms hanging around without any kids, asking about kids.”

“That’s…specific.”

“One of my kids went missing. I fall asleep watching tv. My head’s on sideways.” The words don’t fall the way they’re supposed to, with doubt or hesitance. Instead they’re an argument unto themselves, against themselves. She pinches the bridge of her nose with a cupped palm, leans her head against the window. Stays that way until they’re in front of her apartment.

“This was a stupid idea, Hunter, don’t let me let you talk me into it again.”

“Are you taking the day?”

“What do you think.”

“I can hope.”

“Call me if you hear anything.”

Hunter hovers at the curb, but only for as long as feels appropriate to stew in their concern before pulling away, with no more answers than they had when she called in the first place.


End file.
